Linksys WRT54G Ultimate Hacking (Paperback)

by Paul Asadoorian; Larry Pesce (Author)
Key Phrases: penetration testers, kismet drone, network distance, Using Third-Party Firmware, Fun Projects, Securing Wireless Using (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Book Description
Your Guide to Securing One of the Most Hacked & Popular Devices of All Time!

Product Description
This book will teach the reader how to make the most of their WRT54G series hardware. These handy little inexpensive devices can be configured for a near endless amount of networking tasks. The reader will learn about the WRT54G's hardware components, the different third-party firmware available and the differences between them, choosing the firmware that is right for you, and how to install different third-party firmware distributions. Never before has this hardware been documented in this amount of detail, which includes a wide-array of photographs and complete listing of all WRT54G models currently available, including the WRTSL54GS.
Once this foundation is laid, the reader will learn how to implement functionality on the WRT54G for fun projects, penetration testing, various network tasks, wireless spectrum analysis, and more! This title features never before seen hacks using the WRT54G. For those who want to make the most out of their WRT54G you can learn how to port code and develop your own software for the OpenWRT operating system.

*Never before seen and documented hacks, including wireless spectrum analysis
*Most comprehensive source for documentation on how to take advantage of advanced features on the inexpensive wrt54g platform
*Full coverage on embedded device development using the WRT54G and OpenWRT

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Product Details

• Paperback: 412 pages
• Publisher: Syngress; 1 edition (May 15, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1597491667
• ISBN-13: 978-1597491662
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7.5 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #51,484 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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  #13 in	Books > Computers & Internet > Networking > Wireless Networks
  #29 in	Books > Computers & Internet > Web Development > Security & Encryption > Encryption
  #35 in	Books > Computers & Internet > Business & Culture > Hacking

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

28 of 34 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Not a technical manual., July 5, 2007

By	M. Baker - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

"For those who want to make the most out of their WRT54G you can learn how to port code and develop your own software for the OpenWRT operating system."

"Full coverage on embedded device development using the WRT54G and OpenWRT"

Unfortunately due to publication deadlines, much of the technical content of the book was dropped; it nolonger contains the chapters referenced in the above Amazon description, instead it focuses on giving brief reviews of the various firmwares available, along with hardware and software hacks. While it offers a good overview, the book falls short in technical depth and accuracy.

There are several places in the book where the information is either outdated or innacurate. Some examples -

OpenWrt should not be upgraded through the use of the "ipkg upgrade"; OpenWrt uses a filesystem overlay where the filesystem (squashfs) is readonly but appears writable by redirecting write access to another filesystem (jffs2). Attempting to upgrade will result in filesystem duplication; there are several warnings on the OpenWrt site regarding this.

The failsafe feaure is not new to OpenWrt's RC5 release; there has always been a failsafe proceeedure, but the instructions prior to the RC5 release were slightly different; failsafe was redesigned in RC5 to make it easier to access.

The example of blackholing advertisers through the use of dns using dnsmasq suggests rewriting the dnsmasq.conf; while the example does work, it creates a mess out of the configuration and involves many unnecessary steps. The same task could be acomplished much more easily by simply adding the hostnames to the /etc/hosts file.

The nvram-clean script does not actually reset the nvram configuration to defaults as described. The nvram-clean script only has a handful of known superfluous variables to remove; these are variables created by other firmwares that are nolonger required. It will not set any variables to their defaults; the defaults are device specific and setting them incorrectly would result in an unbootable device.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good information with lots of fun projects, July 28, 2007

By	Russell Butturini (Cookeville, TN) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This book is full of fantastic information about modifying the WRT54G. I found it extremely useful and the projects have so far provided me with hours of hacking fun! However, the one beef I have with this book is it's written like Paul and Larry talk. Often times, they would tell you to do something one way, then contradict themselves later on in the chapter or go off on tangents, making the instruction somewhat hard to follow. Still, it's a great book for anyone interested in enhancing the capabilities of the WRT54G!

7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars WRT54G Encylopedia!, July 3, 2007

By	Brett Hoff (Pensacola, Florida) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Wow I got my book in a week ago and read the entire thing in three nights. It was everything I was expecting! I am now on the hunt for some moderate priced WRT54G's.
Presently I have a WRT54G ver.3 running dd-wrt and after reading this book plan on moving to Openwrt. This really is a must have for anybody that enjoys pushing your equipment to the limit or just tinkering...Yes you can find a lot of this information on your own on the net, But Larry and Paul have done a great job bringing it all together and giving you a lot thought points along the way and made a nice point to make the code sections availble for download saving from time consuming typing mistakes.
My favorite sections are building a pen-testing WRT54g and the hardware hacking section.
All ready adding a 2gig sd card to mine and dual serial ports. And there website for the book [...] is steadily being updated with new and information constantly. Just recently added diseccting the WRT54g ver.8. Thanks guys and Great job. <Dmnhunter>